FAQ for Reviewers

I received a review request, how was I selected for this task?

You have been chosen as a potential reviewer by the Editorial Office of Scholarly Research Exchange. The selection of reviewers is mainly based on the seniority of a particular reviewer within the subject area of the submitted manuscript, taking into account the names of potential reviewers that are suggested by the manuscript's authors. There are different ways the journal uses to make sure that reviewers are of adequate seniority including, among other factors, the h-index of the reviewers. There are also several requirements: the reviewers must not be from the same institute as any of the manuscript's authors, must not have co-authored any article with the manuscript's authors during the last 3 years, and they must be geographically dispersed. In addition, in order to keep the system as distributed as possible, reviewers will not be allowed to review too many articles for Scholarly Research Exchange, and they should not review more than one manuscript for the same author in any 12-month period.

How much time do I have to review the manuscript?

If you agree to review the manuscript, you will be asked about the date by which you expect to be able to submit your report. This date will be communicated to the authors. We encourage our reviewers to act promptly on the manuscript, but leave it up to them to determine when they will be able to do the job properly.

How does the star ranking system work?

Along with any written comments that a reviewer makes in their report, we ask each reviewer to rate the article on a scale of zero to five stars, with the following meanings:

	Outstanding Quality
	Minimum Publishable Quality
	Erroneous or Useless

In order for a manuscript to be accepted for publication, it must receive at least two review reports which rate it as one star or more, and the average rating from all of the submitted review reports must be at least one star.

Do you communicate my report to the author along with my identity?

Yes, Scholarly Research Exchange employs a transparent peer review model in which authors are informed of the identities of the reviewers assigned to their manuscript.

Do you also communicate my report and identity to the other reviewers?

Your identity will not be communicated to the other reviewers during the review process. However, if the manuscript's authors submit a revised version of their manuscript, any review reports that have been received for the previous version of the manuscript will be communicated to all active reviewers.

Will you publish my review report on the journal web site?

If the manuscript that you are reviewing is accepted for publication, two of the three sections of your review report will be published online. The journal's review report form (which can be seen here) contains three sections: a quantitative assessment of the manuscript's quality, a written critique addressed to the authors, and an optional written commentary addressed to the journal's readers. If the manuscript that you are reviewing is accepted for publication, your identity and your assessment of the quality of the manuscript will be published on the journal web site. In addition, you can opt to have a written commentary on the manuscript published along with your assessment of the quality of the manuscript. However, your critique that is addressed to the authors will not be published, so you may wish to include or adapt the content of this section in the written commentary that is addressed to the journal's readers.

Am I free to ask the authors to submit an updated version of their manuscript?

In your review report you may ask the authors to make changes to their manuscript. However, if a manuscript has received at least two review reports with a rating of one star or more, and if the average rating is at least one star, it will be the choice of the authors whether to submit a revised version or move ahead with the publication of the current version of their manuscript. If they chose not to submit a revised version, but rather to move ahead with the current version of their manuscript, then the reviewers' evaluations and commentaries will be published along with the article.

Once I have submitted my review report, how is the final editorial decision made?

Along with any written comments that a reviewer makes in their report, we ask each reviewer to rate the article on a scale of zero to five stars, with the following meanings:

	Outstanding Quality
	Minimum Publishable Quality
	Erroneous or Useless

In order for a manuscript to be accepted for publication in Scholarly Research Exchange, it must receive at least two review reports which rate it with one star or more, and the average rating from all of the submitted review reports must be at least one star. If a manuscript has received enough positive review reports to satisfy these conditions, the manuscript authors will have the choice of either submitting a revised version of their manuscript, or finalizing the review process and moving ahead with the publication of their article.